Swan Place

by Augusta Trobaugh

  “Yes’m.” Darlene glanced at me before she left the kitchen. Aunt Bett kept washing the last few dishes, and I kept drying. When the last plate was washed, she rinsed it and handed it to me. Then she leaned up against the sink and looked out of the window. “I don’t know why, maybe it was all that good singing at church this morning, but I was thinking about the time our mama—your grandmama—sent me and your mama to take piano lessons with old Miss Eunice. Lord have mercy on her soul!”

  Aunt Bett motioned to me to come sit at the kitchen table with her. I guess she remembered how much I liked it when she talked about her and my mama as children together. Mama never would tell me things about that, but I don’t know why. Too, Aunt Bett was seldom in a mood to tell me stories about the olden times. She was usually too busy making pickles and washing and ironing clothes, and cooking for her big family. It was nice to see her in a mood to talk, for a change.

  “Why, we were scared to death, honey. Because neither one of us had ever touched a piano, and we didn’t even have a piano in our house, but our mama had decided we would learn how to play anyway. And when Mama spent good money on something, she expected the very best. So we knew we had to do very, very well. I was around nine and your mama was only six years old. And I remember how we held hands as we walked all the way to the very end of Stone Street and then followed a dirt road on for nearly a quarter of a mile, and it nothing more than two hard clay ruts between fields of tall, dry grass where crickets chirped and little creatures we couldn’t even see scurried away and made such a fearsome noise in the weeds. We had to walk all that way before we came to Miss Eunice’s house—a big, old place with peeling paint standing way back from the road. Funny thing was, there wasn’t a tree on the place, and that day—that hot July day—we could smell the tar from the roof. Miss Eunice must have been watching from the window, because we saw the curtains move a little and then she came and opened the door, just as we got to the front steps. And what a sight she was! Such a stout lady and her wearing a white dress with hundreds and hundreds of bright lavender bows printed on the fabric.” Here, Aunt Bett paused, looked at me, and smiled. “Honey, she had a bosom like nothing I ever saw in my life! Just like two big old rattlesnake watermelons, and those shiny little buttons on her dress just straining, what with trying to keep it all inside!”

  Aunt Bett laughed out loud. “And her hair was salt-and-pepper gray and standing up a little in the back, from where her head had been resting against the back of a chair. And her eyes tiny and just as shiny as the buttons on her dress. Like I said, your mama and I were both scared to death, but we knew if we went back home without having our lessons, we’d get a switching. So we went inside to where it was dark and cool, and when our eyes got used to the dimness, the first thing we noticed was that the entire ceiling of the hallway was gone. We could make out some jagged edges left of what had been the floor of the second floor above it. I’ll never forget that, how that ceiling just went up and up and into some kind of a deep and hot darkness, way up there under the roof, where there was no light. When Miss Eunice saw us staring up, she said, ‘Oh, don’t you pay no mind to that. Whole floor from upstairs fell one summer a long time ago, and after I got that mess all cleared away, I found it made the whole place a lot cooler just to leave it like that. Hot air rises, you see.’”

  I had goose bumps on my arms, from imagining how that house must have looked. And Aunt Bett’s eyes were moving around the perfectly normal ceiling of her own kitchen, all those years later, but she was really seeing Miss Eunice’s house. I waited for her to go back and finish her story, but she just sat there.

  “Did you and Mama learn how to play the piano?” I asked, hoping to get her going again. She glanced at me as if she had forgotten I was there.

  “Oh, we learned some little songs. Not much, but enough to satisfy your grandmama. But your mama never did like to play the piano. In fact, come to think of it, there wasn’t much she ever enjoyed,” Aunt Bett admitted, drawing her eyebrows together. Then she made a little huffing sound and smiled. “Except for going dancing with Roy-Ellis,” she added, nodding her head.

  “Was that really bad, Aunt Bett?” I asked her, wishing with all my heart she could have seen Mama holding hands with Jesus.

  “Well, it wasn’t good, that’s for sure,” Aunt Bett said. “But God is merciful, and I believe He will have mercy on your mama—mainly because of how well she bore all that sickness and pain, I expect.”

  “I’m sure He will,” I added. “I’m truly sure He will.” Because I didn’t need to wonder about it. I knew.

  While the children were still asleep, Darlene and I went outside and hid all the colored Easter eggs, and when the children woke up, we helped them get their shorts back on, and then we all went out into the yard to watch the fun. Such shrieking and laughing! Little Ellis kept stepping on eggs, and every time he did, we all laughed. When everyone else went back inside, to have a treat from their baskets and to put their eggs back into the refrigerator, I saw Aunt Bett standing on the steps, watching me help Molly sort out the crushed eggs from the good ones. When I looked at Aunt Bett, she pointed to Molly and nodded her head. So it was time for me to tell her.

  “Molly, come over here under this tree and sit with me a little bit,” I invited, and she came, squirming and nestling against me so that I could feel her hot little body and breathe the perfume that was Molly.

  “Honey, you remember that old cat Roy-Ellis brought home that time? The one he found beside the road, and it was sick and hurt?” Molly sat up a little and looked at me with burning eyes.

  “I ‘member.” Then she settled back down against my shoulder.

  “It couldn’t get well, no matter what we tried to do to help it,” I reminded her. “And finally, it died. Do you remember that?” I felt Molly’s head nod. My throat tried to go tight on me, and I made myself see Mama again—healthy and happy—and with Jesus. That helped.

  “Well, honey—Mama was so sick and so hurt, nothing could make her better.” There—the words were said. They were said. There was no response from Molly, so I went on. “But now, she’s with Jesus, and she isn’t sick or hurt anymore. She’s healthy and happy—so happy, she’s just dancing around!”

  “Her is?” Molly asked.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Her go to Jesus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her coming back?”

  “No.”

  “You go to Jesus, Dove?

  “Me? No. Not for a long, long, long time, anyway.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “I won’t.”

  When we went inside, Aunt Bett looked at me questioningly, and I nodded my head. Molly put her eggs in the refrigerator and stood there with the door open for a little while, but Aunt Bett didn’t say a thing to her about it, and when Molly finally shut the door and came to me, she asked “Her happy?”

  “Yes. Very happy.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  When it was time for us to go home, Aunt Bett said, “You all just leave your Sunday clothes here. I’ll freshen them up for you. You’ll be needing them for . . .” She stopped and our eyes met.

  “I know what it is we’ll need them for, Aunt Bett. And there’s no need for you to drive us home. We can walk.”

  Darlene motioned me into the bedroom. “I’m glad my shirt looks nice on you, Dove, but let me get you another one for going home in.” She disappeared into “The Closet” and came out with another shirt. After I had taken off her favorite shirt and put on the new one, I saw that on the front was printed MAMA’S BIG GIRL and under that in smaller letters: FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA. Darlene or Aunt Bett didn’t seem to notice that, and I decided I wouldn’t let it bother me. Besides, it was true. I most certainly was my mama’s big girl. And I always would be. Aunt Bett sent us off down the road with a basket loaded with ham wrapped in wax paper and a big jar of potato salad and some of her good biscuits—in case Roy-Ellis was hungry. He was home, but he was sitting in his chai
r, drinking a beer and watching the wrestling matches on television. His eyes were tired-looking, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to pretend that everything was okay.

  “Aunt Bett sent over some ham and potato salad for you,” I told him. “I’ll put it in the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks, honey,” Roy-Ellis mumbled. But I don’t think he even heard me. So I took care of Molly and Little Ellis until it was time for them to go to bed. As soon as they were asleep, I went to bed myself, because there didn’t seem to be anything else I could do. And when I crawled into my cot that night, it felt like a hundred years ago that the telephone had started ringing in the early morning darkness.

  Chapter Three

  By Monday morning, all Mama’s beauty parlor customers had heard about what happened, and they started coming up our front steps loaded down with food for us, and the folks Roy-Ellis worked with at the poultry plant did the same thing. Right after noon, Aunt Mee came up on the back porch and knocked on the kitchen door. Her house was a little gray shack just behind our house, and we shared an overgrown area with old pecan trees in it with her. Of course, folks like us didn’t get to know folks like Aunt Mee real well, because we didn’t have maids or anyone to help with the cleaning. Aunt Mee and all the other colored women like her really didn’t know many white people, except the ones they worked for. The ones who lived in the big houses on the other side of town.

  But sometimes, when I sat out on the back porch rocking Little Ellis to sleep, I could see the light on Aunt Mee’s back porch far away through the old, dead trees, and it always comforted me, in some strange way. I even liked thinking of her as a real aunt, just like Aunt Bett, but Mama told me one time that the only reason people in our town called black women “Aunt” was something left over from a long time ago, maybe even back as far as slave times, when some slaves were almost like members of a white family—but of course, not members at all. And now, I went to the door and saw her dark face through the screen.

  “Hi, Aunt Mee,” I said. “Won’t you come inside?”

  She held out a towel-covered pan and studied my face. “Honey, I’m so sorry to hear about your mama,” she said, still looking so hard into my eyes. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Oh yes,” I answered, but what I really wanted to do was put the pan down and move into her arms and have her hold me close and say that everything was going to be all right. “Won’t you come in?” I asked instead, taking the pan she held out.

  “No, honey. Not right now. I’ll come back later on and help you all.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, because Aunt Mee always showed up to help in a house that was full of sad people. Anytime somebody died, Aunt Mee just came in through the back door, wearing a clean, carefully ironed, white apron, and she took over all the dish washing and refilling the trays on the dining room table, and just moved in and out like a dark shadow, doing for folks. When she went to help folks in the big houses, they had to call her to come, and they had to pay her, as well. But when black folks or even poor white folks had their sorrow, she came without anybody calling her or giving her a thing for it. I don’t know why.

  By afternoon, all the ladies from Aunt Bett’s church started arriving, and one went into the kitchen with me and helped me sort out what all had to go in the refrigerator and what could be stored on the counter. There was so much food, we had to rearrange everything in the refrigerator, and the whole time we worked, she kept making some kind of clucking noises. Sounded just like a hen. But she was a nice lady, and before she left, she said for me to call on her if I needed anything. I thanked her and said I would, but of course, I didn’t even know her name.

  On Tuesday, Aunt Bett came over and brought our Easter clothes, all freshened up and looking nice. She worked at rearranging the refrigerator, as well, and when she shoved Roy-Ellis’s beer bottles out of the way, she snorted. After pushing them this way and that, she finally took all but one of the beer bottles out of the refrigerator and stored them in the bottom cabinet. But she handled them with only the tips of her fingers, and after she had moved them, she washed her hands. In the afternoon, Roy-Ellis and Aunt Bett said they needed to talk again, so Roy-Ellis gave me some money, and I walked with Molly and Little Ellis to town, where we got Popsicles at the little grocery store, and we ate them while we sat on a bench in the tiny park right in the middle of town. Then we went in the dime store, and I let Molly and Little Ellis look at all the toys. And everywhere we went, folks smiled sad smiles at us and clucked their tongues behind our backs.

  When we came home, Aunt Bett and Roy-Ellis were sitting at the kitchen table, so I knew they had been talking again about “making arrangements.” I think Aunt Bett probably did most of the talking, because the next day, Wednesday, Mama’s funeral was held at Aunt Bett’s church. The lady who kept the nursery on Sundays even came in that afternoon so that Little Ellis and Molly and Aunt Bett’s little ones could stay with her, while the rest of us went into the sanctuary.

  I didn’t like seeing Mama’s casket, but it was a right pretty one, and besides, I knew she wasn’t in it. Well, I mean that poor sick body was, but Mama wasn’t. And the whole time the preacher talked, I could almost hear her humming one of those honky-tonk songs I liked so much. I looked at Roy-Ellis, wishing he could hear it too, but he was just sitting there all stiff and miserable like if he moved so much as a single muscle, it would hurt him so bad he wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  Once the service was over, I figured out some of what Roy-Ellis and Aunt Bett must have been deciding at the kitchen table. Because Roy-Ellis wanted the graveside service to be private—with just him there. We had already said our good-byes, and I guess he just wanted to have her all to himself one more time. I could tell Aunt Bett wasn’t too happy about that, but she must have finally agreed. We went along the hallway toward where the lady was taking care of the little ones, and I knew that I had to ask Aunt Bett a question. I wasn’t quite sure of how to ask it, but I meant to know.

  “Aunt Bett, what kind of dress did my mama get buried in?”

  She stopped walking. “How come you to ask such a thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I just wondered.”

  But she looked so sad, I said, “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s okay, honey.” She sighed. “You’re her very own daughter, and you should know. But I don’t want it to make trouble between you and Roy-Ellis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dove, I went out and bought a beautiful white batiste nightgown with lace at the throat and wrists, and I paid a lot of money for it, but when I showed it to Roy-Ellis, he said he wasn’t about to send her off wearing a nightgown.”

  “Then what did she wear?”

  “Love have mercy!” Aunt Bett’s eyes filled up. “Roy-Ellis took one of those awful, honky-tonk, spangle dresses over to the funeral parlor, and my baby sister has gone to eternity dressed like that! Like a tramp or something!” Aunt Bett’s face had gone a deep red, and her chin was shaking.

  I patted her arm. “It’s okay, Aunt Bett,” I tried to comfort her. “I’m pretty sure Jesus won’t mind one little bit about the dress.”

  And I didn’t let her see me smile.

  Aunt Bett dropped her own children, and Molly and Little Ellis as well, off at her house, with Darlene to watch after all of them. “You all get out of those good clothes right away, you hear me? And hang them up! Darlene, you get some things out of the closet for Molly and Little Ellis.”

  Aunt Bett was driving off, but with her head still out of the window, yelling her instructions to the children. Looking back, I saw Darlene laughing. On the way to our house, Aunt Bett said, “We have to hurry getting the food all set out. Folks will be coming any minute, I expect.”

  “I think Aunt Mee may come to help,” I said.

  “Aunt Mee! Why, I haven’t seen her in years.” Aunt Bett’s eyes went soft, and the corners of her mouth turned up just a little. So I fig
ured she was remembering Uncle Frank who’d gotten himself killed by a runaway tractor when he was working old Mr. Carter’s land, way out on the Waynesboro Highway. I’d seen that same soft look and tiny smile once in a while when she looked at any of her children, and I knew she was seeing something of Uncle Frank in them—in the tilt of their ears or the line of their jaws. Because any time Aunt Bett thought of Uncle Frank, it was a beautiful thing. She didn’t seem to mind one little bit that he left her with nothing to help her in raising all those children. But she was doing all right. Because of her being so frugal and all.

  When we got home, I found out just how right I had been about Aunt Mee. As soon as we came into the living room, we could smell the good food she was heating up. She had found a good tablecloth and had put it on the dining room table and had even put a platter of deviled eggs right over that blackberry jelly stain Mama had never been able to get out.

  Not only that—Aunt Mee must have been watching and waiting for us to leave for the funeral, because she’d had time to run the vacuum cleaner and dust the furniture, and when Aunt Bett and I went into the kitchen, we could smell pine oil in addition to the good smells of the hot food. Aunt Mee was at the sink, with her arms in hot, soapy water almost up to her elbows. She turned and looked at us. “Good service?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Bett answered, looking around admiringly at that perfectly spotless kitchen.

  “Well, why don’t you ladies go lie down for a little minute. I’ll call you when folks start coming.” Why, Aunt Mee was treating us just like we were folks from across town and she was our maid. And her calling the both of us ladies had my mouth hanging open.